In short, you don't actually know who is responding to your prayers, or if anyone is responding to them at all, do you? It could be the "god of this world" doing it instead, or it could simply be your own brain looking for things that it can interpret as "answers to prayer".

Quote from: SkyWriting

It has an enormous effect on the people who pray and have their prayers answered.

I'm sure people believe that it has an enormous effect on them. But that effect would be the same regardless of whether their prayers were actually being answered, as long as they believed, would it not?

Quote from: SkyWriting

The results are never under the control of humans at any time. But God will always answer. Just not under human control.

But if you're not even sure how your prayers are answered, then how can you claim to know who's actually answering them, or if anyone is?

Honestly, SkyWriting, I think you need to spend some time really thinking this situation through, rather than relying on answers provided by what amounts to blind faith. Let me pose an example to you to illustrate what I mean.

You claim that this world is governed by the "god of this world", and that people need to reach out and contact God the Creator if they want to have a relationship with him. But when you do that reaching out, how can you be sure that your efforts are getting through to the right god? Wouldn't the "god of this world" interfere with such efforts at communication (either by blocking it or by answering it himself)? Seems to me that you'd have to get your prayers past him first before you could even hope that God the Creator got them. So there's one problem - you don't actually know if your prayers are being received at all, or who's answering them if they are being received.

Another problem is why God the Creator would exile humans to another god's province in the first place, then set up such a roundabout method by which humans can come back to him. Seems like a rather excessive response to me. I mean, when children screw up, their parents punish them, but they don't do so by the equivalent of exile for the very first offense, and certainly not exiling them to live with another family (and thus giving up their rights and authority).

The problem with relying on faith-based answers to these problems and others is that you're basing them not on actual knowledge, but on things you believe but can't be sure about, and that don't hold together when you actually examine them critically. I mean, the setup you're proposing here is pretty problematic, to say the least. God the Creator seems to be a pretty pathetic god, actually. He exiled his 'children' the very first time they ever screwed up, effectively gave them into the keeping of another god, and then...what? Decided he wanted a relationship with them after all, thus the whole long-distance prayer thing?

In short, you don't actually know who is responding to your prayers, or if anyone is responding to them at all, do you?

Yes. I had 20 some years to evaluate my answered prayers. There has not been any doubt about the major incidents. There is plenty of doubt about "light prayers" not subjectedin earnest. God hears those, and I have no idea how He answers them. Those few offered in "hard sweat" and then given up completely areanswered in force and dramatically.

What does what you wrote have to do with how you're able to tell your God-experiences aren't Satan-experiences?

You said "I apparently" live under the rule of Satan. I have no experience with thismatter, so I cannot dispute your learned evaluation. If you say so, I guess. You can see what I cannot. I defer to your better judgment. : )

If you were, how would you be able to tell? Everything you feel could be a trick. And after all, you apparently live in his domain.

This is part of what I'm trying to get at as well, SkyWriting. You can't be sure of anything with just faith, because your faith depends not on what you know, but what you believe. No different than people who believed in a flat earth with a hemispherical firmament over it like a dome because of the illusions of perspective that make things look like that. That's why we keep pressing for evidence, for something other than faith, because faith can so easily be wrong. More than that, it can lead people to misread things that actually occur in the context of that faith so as to further enmesh them in the wrong belief.

You said "I apparently" live under the rule of Satan. I have no experience with thismatter, so I cannot dispute your learned evaluation. If you say so, I guess. You can see what I cannot.

You're the one who's been claiming that Satan is the "god of this world". If he's the god of this world, that means he rules here, correct?

S does rule the material world. And that part of me will indeed die. And has sinned and continues to.

Sky...you're seriously not seeing the contradiction and confusion here? Really?

Logged

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

S does rule the material world. And that part of me will indeed die. And has sinned and continues to.

Or so you believe. Which is not the same as actually knowing it and being able to prove it. Which is the point both Azdgari and I are trying to get across.

For that matter, Satan is the father of lies (as described in the Gospel of John). If you're right and he is the god of this world, don't you think he'd enjoy leading Christians like you around by the nose, getting you to accept lies as the truth, and otherwise having fun playing games with you and your ilk? The most effective tool of a con man or a liar is someone who believes them unreservedly, because that person, as far as everyone else knows, is telling the truth.

Jesus did go to hell, at least in old Catholic lore.. Google "the Harrowing of Hell."

Okay, but was he at any risk from its fires?

Hellfire is a pagan adoption of the apostate Christian church. The Greek term Jesus used was in this case Gehenna, a literal place known in the Hebrew as Geh Hinnom. The Greek Gehenna, and the common modern day Wadi Er-Rabbi. Its a village S and SW of the ancient Jerusalem. I could give you a picture of it if you like.

Umar, please don't resurrect posts that are over a year old in a discussion. The people to whom you are responding might not even post here anymore, and there's no telling if they're still interested in the conversation even if they do.

However, I think I will respond to your later response to Brakeman. Brakeman was clearly making the point that the Jesus story (especially the sacrifice at the end) made no sense considering that Jesus was not the object of the "judgment of sin" or whatever it was. It's roughly akin to someone who did not commit a crime deliberately paying the penalty for that crime so as to keep everyone else who ever committed that crime (or would commit it in the future) from having to pay the penalty for it. It's not just in any way, shape, or form. Indeed, it's the antithesis of justice to punish an innocent for the sake of the guilty. On top of that, punishing them for all future crimes as well as all past ones - so not only are they being punished for things they didn't do, they're being punished for things they wouldn't have done in the future.

It's even worse if you accept the whole notion of an "original sin" that all people thereafter would be judged for. It's punishing people for a decision they had no part in simply because of some relationship to a person or people who did. It would be like punishing me for enslaving black people, or for committing atrocities against Native Americans, simply because past Americans did both.

Two injustices do not cancel each other out. They never have and they never will, just like you can never add two negative numbers and get closer to 0.

Man has turned from God and refuses to talk with Him. Any time man chooses, God will listen and respond.

Most of the regulars here will tell you that they were Christians. When they felt their faith starting to weaken, they did not want to lose it. Quite the contrary, they were desperate to hang onto it, and they prayed and prayed and prayed for Yahweh to give them strength, or some kind of a sign, or something, to help them keep believing in him. Yahweh did not answer them. Which brings me back to my question: what's stopping him?

You, being in the wrong place, need to come to Him. It's not "fair" being born here but it is what it is. We must come to Him in humility.

Do you actually READ what people say to you? Look at those bits I've bolded. Those people did exxactly what you said they should do - and nothing.

Man has turned from God and refuses to talk with Him. Any time man chooses, God will listen and respond.

Most of the regulars here will tell you that they were Christians. When they felt their faith starting to weaken, they did not want to lose it. Quite the contrary, they were desperate to hang onto it, and they prayed and prayed and prayed for Yahweh to give them strength, or some kind of a sign, or something, to help them keep believing in him. Yahweh did not answer them. Which brings me back to my question: what's stopping him?

You, being in the wrong place, need to come to Him. It's not "fair" being born here but it is what it is. We must come to Him in humility.

Do you actually READ what people say to you? Look at those bits I've bolded. Those people did exxactly what you said they should do - and nothing.

Do you actually READ what people say to you? Look at those bits I've bolded. Those people did exactly what you said they should do - and nothing.

But your imaginary events compare very poorly to my explanation

What "imaginary events"? Why don't you respond to what Anfauglir said?

WHAT HE SAID COMPARES VERY POORLY.

Those people did not do even close to what I explained.

Your explanation sucks then, 'cause it looks like they did EXACTLY what you explained. It may help if you go into detail on what you mean by "come to Him".

Logged

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."